Friday, April 22, 2016

Migrating Through the Balkans

"Documents scattered only yards from Serbia’s border with Hungary provide evidence that many of the migrants flooding Europe are scrapping their true nationalities and likely assuming new ones, as they enter the European Union.

Many believe using a fake document — or having none — gives them a better of chance of receiving asylum in Germany and other Western European states. That’s because the surest route to asylum is to be a refugee from war and not an economic migrant fleeing poverty.

Serbian border police say many arriving from Macedonia claim they are Syrian but have no proof.

"An international court on Thursday sentenced a leading Kosovo Serb politician to nine years in prison for war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians — a ruling that could heighten tensions in the Balkan region and prompt Belgrade to start reconsidering its EU-mediated reconciliation talks with Pristina. Judges of the European Union’s justice mission in Kosovo found Oliver Ivanovic guilty of murder and torture of civilians in 1999 during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia when Serb forces attacked ethnic Albanians amid NATO bombings. Judges said Ivanovic was a member of a paramilitary group that chased ethnic Albanians, separated men from women and children, and tortured and killed at least four of them."It's a token trial.

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